Exams decision is least worst option for students
NOW the Leaving Cert is out of the way for July, the next question is whether calculated grades work for college entry? The answer is yes.
The CAO has confirmed it will accept certification based on a calculated grades system, or indeed any other State-certified means.
Colleges had been planning for a much later than usual start for first years but University College Dublin deputy president Prof Mark Rogers said after Minister Joe McHugh’s announcement: “We anticipate our academic year for first years will open closer to normal start date”.
The college will make offers for more than 4,000 places and hopes to start first-year classes within four weeks of the grade results being issued.
Other colleges also hope to get back to classes earlier than planned but with health restrictions in mind.
There will inevitably be those disappointed students who don’t get the calculated grades they feel they deserve.
They will have the option of rejecting them and taking the Leaving Cert on an unspecified date in the future, if they want to go down that road.
This option will be availed of by some – but will anger others who don’t get their first preference course this year.
However, in the absence of the normal Leaving Cert, the new arrangement is the least worst option and certainly better than all the rest.
For those looking for a college place, a fair and equitable system of selection is essential. There has been no shortage of ideas put forward in recent weeks, everything from colleges running their own matriculation entrance tests, American-style SAT tests (Scholastic Aptitude Tests) and even throwing college doors open to all-comers.
One politician suggested interviews, which would prove controversial – for instance, if they were introduced for courses such as medicine.
Universities are willing to see if they have any room for manoeuvre around enrolling more students for high-demand courses such as medicine, but there are laboratory constraints and restrictions around quotas for Irish students.
Indeed, if there is any legal action arising from the new arrangements, it may well be by someone who cannot get into this particular high-demand faculty.
It brings to mind the quip by a former CAO manager who said: “The only fair selection system for college is the one that gets my daughter into medicine.”
More than 73,000 applications have been lodged to date with the CAO and normally about 46,000 accept places in college every year.
The numbers will be slightly higher this year because of the expected decline in overseas students. But the idea of allowing every Irish applicant in was rejected by the Higher Education Authority, whose CEO Dr Alan Wall said it would have significant destabilising effects across higher and further education.
“It would also result in very significant student non-completion rates during the first academic year, as numbers are whittled down to ensure adequate resources and physical facilities (labs, for example) per student are available in subsequent years.
“The student-staff ratio would go through the roof,” he wrote to the Teachers’ Union of Ireland, who had suggested some alternative options to select students this year.
Dr Wall said that, in theory, the higher education institutions could put in place their own admissions procedures (matriculation exam, SAT-type test or interviews) but these would face the same issues as the Leaving Cert with regard to organisation, social distancing and health and well-being risks.
“A central matriculation exam would need to be agreed across 22 institutions, standards set in the context of the curriculum, a marking scheme agreed, applied, moderated, marked and standardised,” he said.
“Forgetting about the issue of equity between different years of exam entrants, creating such a system as complex as the Leaving Certificate, but not run by the State Examinations Commission in a few months is no solution for anxious students.”
He is right – and the complex arrangements announced by Mr McHugh, with help from Irish and overseas experts, have been welcomed by the IUA representing the universities and THEA representing the technological sector.
They both accept the arrangements are the best way to proceed.
The Irish Second-Level Students’ Union has been involved in the advisory group discussing the arrangements and conducted two useful surveys. The second reflected the increasing numbers who wanted the July exam cancelled.
Not everyone will agree with the Government’s decision, of course.
We can probably expect a flood of appeals over calculated grades from many disappointed students this autumn.
Colleges hope to get back to classes earlier than planned